Windows Phone update roadmap leaked

A purported Microsoft slide showing the 2012 Windows Phone roadmap seems to indicate that we could see the next major update by mid-2012.

The Tango update is scheduled for the second quarter of 2012, but it won’t be aimed at high-end phones. Instead, Tango is supposed to bring Windows Phone to dirt cheap devices, or “products with the best prices” as Microsoft calls them. This seems to indicate that it will be even better at resource management than Mango, which is already far ahead of iOS and Android in terms of its OS footprint.

The big new, of course, is Apollo. The new OS is scheduled to appear in Q4 and it should enable Microsoft to offer competitive superphones. Currently Windows Phone devices max out at WVGA resolutions and single-core Qualcomm chips. Apollo could change all this and pave the way for dual-core designs with high resolution screens, probably 720p.

However, by the end of 2012 we should see quad-core Android phones and the next generation iPhone, which could also boast a quad-core chip. Of course, Windows Phone is less resource-intensive than Android and it runs great even on single-core chips, but that is beside the point. Average consumers simply like bigger numbers on their new shiny toys, so dual-core chips and 720p screens mean a lot in terms of marketing.